Praying hands banana
🍌 Praying Hands Banana
Praying Hands is one of the most unusual and visually distinctive banana cultivars. It is a cooking/eating banana with fused fingers, where the individual fruits grow tightly together and resemble two hands pressed together in prayer—hence the name.
6
🌱 Basic profile
Characteristic | Praying Hands |
Common name | Praying Hands Banana |
Scientific group | Musa spp. |
Genome | AAB |
Origin/association | Southeast Asia / Philippines |
Fruit shape | Fused, hand-like fingers |
Peel | Green → yellow |
Flesh | Firm, creamy |
Flavour | Sweet, slightly tangy |
Seeds | Generally seedless |
Plant | Tall and vigorous |
Market | Specialty / exotic |
Main attraction | Unique fused fruit structure |
The cultivar is commonly classified within the AAB group, although cultivar naming and historical origin descriptions vary among sources.
🙏 Why is it called Praying Hands?
This is its most remarkable feature.
Instead of each banana finger separating normally, the fruit fingers can remain fused together in clusters, creating a shape that resembles two hands joined in prayer.
That makes it particularly valuable for:
🌴 Exotic fruit collections
🌱 Botanical gardens
🏡 Premium home gardens
🌾 Agritourism
📸 Farm experiences
🎁 Specialty fruit displays
🍌 Niche premium markets
It is much more of a conversation-piece banana than a commodity banana.
🍌 Eating quality
Praying Hands is unusual because the fruit can be eaten fresh when fully ripe, but it also has good cooking characteristics.
When ripe, the flesh is:
Sweet + creamy + slightly tangy + relatively firm.
Compared with Blue Java, it is generally firmer and less custard-like.
Compared with G9, it has a much more distinctive shape and specialty-market appeal.
🌳 Plant characteristics
Praying Hands is generally a tall, vigorous banana plant.
This means you should consider:
Strong wind protection
Good drainage
Adequate irrigation
Support for heavy bunches where required
Regular sucker management
For a commercial farm, I would avoid planting it in an exposed high-wind location.
☀️ Growing requirements
Sunlight
Full sun is best.
Water
Maintain consistent moisture through drip irrigation.
Soil
Use:
Deep soil
Good drainage
High organic matter
Good potassium availability
Avoid standing water around the pseudostem.
Fertilization
Bananas are particularly demanding of potassium, especially during bunch development. A soil- and leaf-analysis-based fertigation program is preferable to a fixed generic fertilizer schedule.
🦠 Disease management
Praying Hands is still a banana and therefore requires normal banana biosecurity.
Monitor for:
Fusarium wilt
Sigatoka/leaf-spot diseases
Banana bunchy top virus
Nematodes
Banana weevil
Root-zone problems
For a commercial plantation, use authenticated, disease-free planting material.
